Life at High Tide | Page 3

'bout blind; and he ain't just right, either."
"How ain't he just right?"
"Well, you know, Nathaniel was always one of the dreamin' kind; a real good man, but he wa'n't like folks."
Lizzie nodded.
"And if you remember, he was all the time inventin' things. Well, now he's got set that he can invent a machine so as you can see the dead. I mean spirits. Well, of course he's crazy. Josh says he's crazy as a bluefish. But what's troublin' him now is that he can't finish his machine. He says that if he goes to the Farm, what with him bein' blindish and not able to do for himself, that his glasses and wheels--and dear knows what all that he's got for ghost-seein'--will get all smashed up. An' I guess he's 'bout right. They're terrible crowded, Mis' Dean says. Nat allows that if he could stay at Dyer's, or some place, a couple of months, where he could work, quiet, he'd make so much money that he'd pay his board ten times over. Crazy. But then, I can't help bein' sorry for him. Some folks don't mind the troubles of crazy folks, but I don't know why they ain't as hard to bear as sensible folks' troubles."
"Harder maybe," Lizzie said.
"Josh said he just set and wrung his hands together, and he says to Hiram Wells, he says, 'Gimme a month--and I'll finish it. For the sake,' he says, 'of the blessed dead.' Gave you goose-flesh, Josh said."
"You can see that he believes in his machine."
"Oh, he's just as sure as he's alive!"
"But why can't he finish it at the Farm? I guess Mis' Dean would give him a closet to keep it in."
"Closet? Mercy! He's got it all spread out on a table in his room at the hotel. Them loafers go up and look at it, and bust right out laughin'. Josh says it's all little wheels and lookin'-glasses, and they got to be balanced just so. Mis' Dean ain't got a spot he could have for ten minutes at a time."
They were silent for a few minutes, and then Lizzie Graham said: "Does he feel bad at bein' a pauper? The Mays was always respectable. Old Mis' May was real proud."
Mrs. Butterfield ruminated: "Well, he don't like it, course. But he said (you know he's crazy)--'I am nothin',' he says, 'and my pride is less than nothin'. But for the sake of the poor Dead, grant me time,' he says. Ain't it pitiful? Almost makes you feel like lettin' him wait. But what's the use?"
Lizzie Graham nodded. "But there's people would pay money for one of them machines--if it worked."
"That's what he said; he said he'd make a pile of money. But he didn't care about that, except then he could pay board to Dyer, if Dyer'd let him stay."
"An' won't he?"
"No; and I don't see as he has any call to, any more 'an you or me."
Lizzie Graham plucked at the dry grass at her side. "That's so. 'Tain't one person's chore more 'an another's. But--there! If this wa'n't Jonesville, I believe I'd let him stay with me till he finishes up his machine."
"Why, Lizzie Graham!" cried Mrs. Butterfield, "what you talkin' about? You couldn't do it--you. You ain't got to spare, in the first place. And anyway, him an unmarried man, and you a widow woman! Besides, he'll never finish it."
Lizzie's face reddened angrily. "Guess I could have a visitor as well as anybody."
"Oh, I didn't mean you wouldn't be a good provider," Mrs. Butterfield said, turning red herself. "I meant folks would talk."
"Folks could find something better to talk about," Lizzie said; "Jonesville is just nothin' but a nest o' real mean, lyin' gossip!"
"Well, that's so," Mrs. Butterfield agreed, placidly.
Lizzie Graham put on her sunbonnet. "Better be gettin' along," she said.
Mrs. Butterfield rose ponderously. "And they'd say you was a spiritualist, too; they'd say you took him to get his ghost-machine made."
"That's just what I would do," the other answered, sharply. "I ain't a mite of a spiritualist, and I don't believe in ghosts; but I believe in bein' kind."
"I believe in keepin' a good name," Mrs. Butterfield said, dryly.
They went on down the windy pasture slope in silence; the mullein candles blossomed shoulder-high, and from underfoot came the warm, aromatic scent of sweet-fern. Once they stopped for some more blueberries, with a desultory word about the heat; then they picked their way around juniper-bushes, and over great knees of granite, hot and slippery, and through low, sweet thickets of bay. At the foot of the hill the shadows were stretching across the road, and the wind was flagging.
"My, ain't the shade good?" Lizzie said, when they stopped under her great elm; "I couldn't bear to live where there wa'n't trees."
"There's always shade on one side